


Rot

by Bullfinch



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Body Horror, Dissociation, Gore, Horror, M/M, if you are especially averse to major character death you may want to avoid this fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-26
Updated: 2015-10-26
Packaged: 2018-04-28 06:24:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,314
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5081086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bullfinch/pseuds/Bullfinch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A fight with a fear demon goes badly for Dorian and Bull.</p><p>(Please note the M rating is PURELY for body horror/gore.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rot

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Written for a prompt on the DA kinkmeme ([here](http://dragonage-kink.livejournal.com/15060.html?thread=59643860#t59643860)) for a scary story! This is my first ever attempt at writing horror and I’m sure I have work to do, but the journey of a thousand miles etc etc. Note that I was unable to resist including that old favorite of mine, horrible gory grossness :’) so, again, please check the tags and prepare for gore.

Dorian shifts and coughs.

He blinks, his eyes tearing, clogged with dust. Pitch-black. His head throbs. There’s something on top of him. Heavy. Something heavy. He pushes at it weakly. Warm against his palm.

A groan.

“Bull?” Dorian whispers.

“Yeah.  _Ow.”_  Bull starts to move. The sound of stones shifting.

The events begin to assemble themselves in Dorian’s mind. Demons. Demons roaming the highlands, the Inquisitor stalking ahead with her mouth set in a determined frown, Solas lingering hesitant at the back. Odd for a man whose pomposity rivals Dorian’s. Not a good sign. Bull, of course, was eminently unhappy about the whole situation.

Then Solas flinched, and they were beset.

There was a fear demon, Dorian remembers that much. The rest of the fight is…hazy. The only thing clear in his mind is the awful sensation of the ground giving under him, of falling through the darkness…

Bull grunts, extracting himself. “You okay?”

And waking with Bull above him. “You shielded me,” Dorian mumbles.

“Yeah. No offense, but you’re kind of delicate.”

A human, and a mage to boot. Bull does have a point. “I’m fine.” Dorian checks himself. Bruises, certainly, but nothing broken. There is a nice big goose-egg on his forehead. Maybe that’s why things are so hazy. “Concussed, I think, but no more. How about you?”

“I’ll live.”

“That isn’t an answer.”

“Just got knocked around some. I can take it, I got a thick skull.”

The warmth of Bull’s body recedes, and Dorian sits up, lifts a hand. A dim yellow light flickers into existence above him. There. Much better.

Bull blinks, squinting. There’s a deep gash on his brow, with a thick stream of red below, spilling into his eye. Dorian looks him over. A few bruises, yes, nothing too serious—

Then he gasps. “Bull, Maker—“

There’s a gouge in his side, the flesh ripped and bleeding liberally. Through the tear Dorian thinks he sees the white flash of ribs. Bull covers it up with his three-fingered hand. “Flesh wound. Like I said, I’ll live.”

“Let me help you, at least—“

“You’re running low. Could tell during the fight. Save it, just in case.”

Is he running low? Yes, Dorian discovers, his connection to the Fade strained and flagging. “Fine,” he mutters. “I don’t suppose you know what’s happened?”

“This region’s got caves all over. Demons must have broken the ground and dumped us down here.” He looks up. “Ah, crap.”

Dorian follows his gaze. There’s a thin crack of light, far, far above. They won’t be getting back that way. “Do you think the others are down here?”

Bull considers it. “I ran for you when I saw the ground coming apart. Solas and Ev were far enough to get away, I think.”

“Still, we should look for them.” Dorian struggles to his feet and calls out, “Evelyn! Solas!”

Bull calls out too, much more loudly. Dorian winces. The noise makes his head throb. He guides his orb of light around, clambering over rocks. Then— “There!” Movement, at the very edges of the light, something slipping past. He scrambles towards it, scanning, peering into the shadowed crevices of stone.

Nothing.

“Hm.” He straightens. “Perhaps I was wrong.”

“I don’t think they’re down here.” Bull grasps his wounded side. “We should look for a way back to the surface.”

“Yes. All right.” Dorian rubs the lump on his forehead absently. That knock on the head might have been worse than he thought, if it’s making him see things.

“Hey. Over here.”

Bull stands by a crack in the side of the cavern. Dorian makes his way over. “Well, let’s see where this goes.”

He walks ahead, with Bull behind, half-crouched in the low tunnel. The sounds of labored breathing are close against him, confined by the close stone walls. Dorian looks over his shoulder. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Mm. Yeah. Just hurts, that’s all.”

“If you say so.” Dorian faces forward again.

Movement, the darting of some small, quick creature. He halts, Bull bumping into him. “Did you see that?”

“See what?”

Dorian peers into the dark, sends his glowing orb forward a few yards. Only to find an empty tunnel. “Never mind.”

“You sure  _you’re_  okay?”

“Yes. Just—ugh. This bump on the head. Sorry.”

“Dorian.”

A large hand on his back. Dorian turns. “I’m all right, really.”

“We’ll get out of here.”

“I know.”

Bull strokes his face, leans down, and kisses him. Dorian grasps Bull’s hand, squeezing it a little. Being stuck down here in the dark really is rather unpleasant, and it’s making him nervous despite himself. But Bull is helping.

When he breaks away he sees something flutter over Bull’s shoulder.

He drags the orb of light forward, pouring power into it so it blazes bright enough to make him shield his eyes. There was something, there was  _something_  behind them, now  _where did it go—_

“Dorian!”

“I saw something! I  _know_  it this time!” He guides the orb over every nook and cranny—where is it, where did it  _go—_

“Dorian, there’s nothing there.” Bull grasps his arm. “It’s just us down here.”

Is it? But his search reveals nothing. Perhaps Bull is right.

A whisper in his ear. He whips around. The sudden movement sends a spike of pain through his head, and he winces, staggering to one side, his vision warping.

Bull catches him with one hand. “You scared of tight spaces?”

“No, actually.” He presses the heel of his hand to his eye.

“You sure? ‘Cause that might—“

“Yes, I am,” he says shortly. “Let’s just keep moving, shall we?”

Bull’s hand stays on his back a moment. It’s probably supposed to be a comfort, but his hand trembles. “Yeah.”

Dorian leads the way again. Still a distant murmur in his ears. Not a whisper. Not a whisper, he thinks. Just the far-off sound of rushing water. Or something. The path winds, the walls veering in as if to trap them, but the narrow slit of space never closes, not completely. The light drifts ahead of them, their only weapon against the dark. Suddenly Dorian has the odd, vertiginous sensation that there’s nothing but blackness down here, nothing at all—that the tunnel does not exist until the light creates it, carving it out of the unknowable void. False. Of course that’s false. The rocks are solid, damp under his hand. Real.

At one point the floor starts sloping up, and he picks up his pace. “How far do you think we fell?”

Bull takes a breath. “Don’t know. Long.” Another breath. “Long way.”

“Bull?” Dorian turns. “You sound unwell.”

In the dim light sweat shines on Bull’s face. He shakes his head, his horns knocking into the stone. “I’ll be fine. We should keep going.”

“Let me take another look at that wound.”

“I said I’ll be fine.”

“Bull, it’s plainly hurting you. I can help.” Dorian grasps his hand and tries to pull it away.

“ _No.”_  Bull twists. “You can look at it when we’re out of here.”

_Perfect._

“What’s that?” Dorian asks.

“I said you can look at it when we’re out of here.”

“No, what you said after.”

Bull lifts an eyebrow. “I didn’t say anything after.”

He didn’t? What was—Dorian squeezes his eyes shut.

Unbidden a face comes to him in the dark, smiling with a thousand teeth.

He flinches, stumbling back. Again Bull catches him. “Hey. What’s going on with you?”

“I didn’t—“ he mumbles. “There’s nothing wrong.”

“Bullshit.”

“I’m seeing things! All right?” Dorian snaps. “I don’t know, maybe I am afraid of tight spaces. I’m sorry for startling you.”

“ ’S okay. Just worried about you.”

“And I’m worried about you. That wound—“ He gestures, then freezes.

“What?”

“Your wound. It’s grown. Look at the edges—“ He pries Bull’s fingers away, ignoring Bull’s efforts to keep it covered.

Grown indeed.

Bull’s eye flicks down. The ragged edges of the gash have expanded, yes, exposing a wide red ring of sheared muscle. But it’s worse than that. Bull’s ribs, twice as thick as a human’s, have begun to erode, and beneath there’s a hole in the thin layer of tissue through which Dorian can just see Bull’s lung, contracted, hardly moving.

So that’s why his breathing is so labored. Bubbles of blood froth at the wound edges. Only one lung working. With a body that big— “Bull—“ Dorian touches the wound, his hands trembling. “You—you need—“

“I’ll live. This has actually happened to me before.” He cracks a grin, dried blood flaking off his face. “Krem had to drag me through the woods for five miles before we got back to camp and found Stitches. If there’s one thing Qunari are good at, it’s staying alive.”

“But it’s—it wasn’t like that before! There’s something wrong—“

“Some demon crap, probably. Let’s just get going.”

“No. This can’t get any worse. I need to help you.  _Please.”_

Bull takes a deep breath, only half his chest rising. “Yeah, fine.”

Dorian shakes his hands out and lays them on the open hole, summoning his healing magic. It’s weak and thin, but he pushes it anyway, urging it to repair that  membrane beneath Bull’s eroded ribs—

Something lashes out, some belligerent will that snaps at his fingers. He jerks back. “There’s—there’s something there—“

“Dorian? What’s wrong?”

“No, I—I have to try.” He touches the wound again, pleading,  _heal him, I need him, he can’t die, please—_

A screeching hiss. Black jaws leap out of the hole and devour Dorian’s healing magic. He scrambles back, terrified, clutching his hands to each other to make sure they haven’t been bitten off.

“Dorian.” Bull lurches forward, supporting himself on the wall. “You all right?”

“There’s something— _in_  that wound.” He swallows. “I can’t—I can’t get it out.”

Bull stares, uncomprehending. Behind him something crawls over the ceiling. Dorian tenses, presses a hand to his mouth, smells the blood and whips it away. “We need help. We need h—help.”

“Mm.” Bull nods, blinking slowly. “Let’s go.”

Dorian turns. Something smiles at him in the dark. No. There’s nothing there. But there is. Right at the edges of the light, its teeth gleaming. He sends the orb forward, dreading what he’ll see. Some new demon? The face retreats, hovering at the edges of the darkness. It can’t be real. Just seeing things. That’s all. Dorian walks forward, unsteady. They need help. They have to get out of here. The walls sag on either side, caging him in, threatening at any second to collapse.

_Perfect._

No. No. There’s nothing there. Dorian shakes his head violently, pain lancing straight through to the back of his skull. Nothing there. Nothing there. Nothing there. Shivers of motion at the periphery of his vision. He does not look. It’s just him and Bull down here. No one else.

“Bull,” he says.

“Yeah?”

“I don’t suppose you remember the fight. Which demons were present.”

“Fear,” Bull responds. His breathing is rapid. “Saw that. Another one. Didn’t. Know it. Solas said. Hunger.”

Hunger.

Dorian tries to recall if he’s ever met such a demon. Desire he knows well, and despair, and fear. Hunger…he isn’t sure.

There’s a noxious scent on the damp air. The scent of sickness.

Dorian can hardly bring himself to turn. But he does.

Bull has dropped back, and leans heavily on the wall. Dorian goes to him with halting steps. “Bull—let me—let me look—“

Bull grimaces, panting, and peels his hand away.

Skin peels away with it. The edges of the wound are black and frayed, dotted with pearls of pus. There’s a faint hiss as little bubbles swell and pop in serous, yellowish fluid. With Bull’s hand removed the rotting smell hits Dorian full-on, and he nearly retches. “Nn—“ He shakes his head. “It’s shouldn’t be—how is it festering already?” It’s bigger, too, Bull’s body wall corroded down below the chest cavity to his abdomen, the soft surface of viscera showing beneath the diaphanous sheen of vascular membrane. More ribs are visible above, eaten clean through.

_Perfect._

“I’ll live.” Bull cracks a grin. His face is pale. “This has actually happened to me before. Krem had to drag me through—”

“You already said that,” Dorian murmurs. It’s all right. This isn’t real. This isn’t happening. It’s simply an awful dream. He was knocked out in the fight, and he’s just waiting now to wake up.

“Oh,” Bull says faintly. “Forgot.”

“Let’s keep moving,” Dorian suggests. “Perhaps we’re almost there.”

“Yeah, maybe.”

Dorian trudges forward. In the darkness an emaciated hand beckons at him. He follows it. Maybe it’ll show him the way out.  _Perfect,_  it says. Perfect what? Dorian’s mouth is dry, his throat constricted. He can’t get out the words to ask. It glides backwards, staying just out of the light. The effect is one of stagnancy, as if no matter how many steps he takes he goes no further, gets no closer to the gaunt creature, makes no progress toward the surface. It’s all right, he reminds himself. He isn’t here. He’s asleep. Bull’s labored breathing follows him. Bull isn’t here either. Bull isn’t wounded.

“I think. Something’s wrong.”

Dorian turns.

A chunk of Bull’s body is gone. He lists to one side, his shoulders askew, a half-dozen ribs eaten away. The crest of his hip bone pokes out of the lower edge of the hole. He isn’t breathing anymore. It wasn’t breathing Dorian heard. It was the hissing of the bubbles in his rotting flesh, swelling and bursting in a tidal rhythm. Bull staggers forward, his one eye milky and dull. “I feel.”

_Perfect._

“I feel.”

_Perfect. Vessel._

“I feel. Hungry.”

A terrified sob wrenches out of Dorian’s chest. “No, please, please, I can’t—“

“Wait.” Bull reaches out and grasps.

Dorian stumbles back, trips over his own feet, crashes to the ground. Bull kneels over him and grabs his wrist. Dorian tries to pull away, but the fear has rendered him senseless, and his strength is gone. Bull opens his mouth.

He bites a chunk of flesh off of Dorian’s arm.

Dorian feels the intense pressure of skin and muscle parting, the scrape of teeth on bone. He can’t scream, only lets out a strangled sort of whimper. It hurts. It isn’t real. How could it hurt this much if it weren’t real? Bull’s hand wraps around the back of his head, pulls him closer. Teeth sink into his cheek. He tries weakly to push Bull away. He can’t. There isn’t any hope. He’s going to die in this place, deep underground, with the rock closing in around him, Bull holding him close. Fingers rip at his robes, dig at his stomach, piercing the flesh. It isn’t real, it isn’t real, it  _isn’t real—_

_“Dorian!”_

A sharp voice. Familiar. Dorian looks over Bull’s canted shoulder.

Solas stands in the low tunnel, arms weaving before him. Ice surges up over Bull’s pale skin. “There you are,” he says.

Dorian crawls back, disimpaling his stomach from Bull’s frozen fingers. “Please—“ he chokes out, “please help me—“

Solas goes to him and kneels. “I have to warn you, waking may be unpleasant.”

Dorian blinks, confused. “I—waking—“

Solas grasps his shoulder.

——

Open air.

Pain—it  _hurts,_  it hurts, his arm, his cheek, his stomach. He coughs, gropes clumsily at his face.

Then he’s being hoisted up. A rumbling voice. “He gonna make it?”

“Only if we hurry.” That’s Solas. The other—

—Bull, his face grim, a gash on his forehead spilling blood over his eye. He ’s carrying Dorian now, the clouded sky slipping past above him. “Are you  _really_  sure you can’t do anything about this? Gut wounds—“

“Yes,” Solas says shortly. “The demon was…powerful. It took all I had to free him.”

Then Evelyn’s voice. “The camp can’t be more than a mile off. He’ll make it.”

Dorian coughs again and swallows. Hurts. He presses a hand to his middle. Wet and warm. His fingers come away bloody.

“Hey, kadan,” Bull murmurs. “Just hang on.”

“What—“ he breathes, “—what happened?”

“Fear demon.” Bull is calm, calmer than Dorian would expect in a situation like this. “It grabbed you and fucked off. Think you were pissing it off with all that fire you kept throwing. It left all its little—“ some Qunlat word Dorian isn’t familiar with— “to slow us down. By the time we killed them it was gone. So we had to track it down. Which we did, and we killed it, but we couldn’t wake you up. Solas had to go in and get you. Then you just started—bleeding. Out of nowhere.”

“Wounds sustained in the dream state,” Solas says. “Isn’t that right?”

“Hm,” Dorian says. Pain. Pain. He’s sick with it. “Bull.”

“Yeah?”

“Are you…”

“Am I what?”

Too much effort to keep going. Dorian feels his eyes drifting shut.

“Dorian? Dorian!”

That’s the last thing he hears.

——

When he wakes again he hardly feels anything.

Miraculous. He tries to sit up so he can look down at himself. Oh. That hurts, very much. He moans and lies down again.

“Kadan! Don’t move around, you’ll open up that wound again.”

Bull. That’s Bull. Dorian reaches out.

His hand is enveloped by a much larger one. Bull’s face appears in his vision, leaning over him. It’s creased with concern. “Just take it slow for a bit, all right?”

Dorian nods. His gaze slips down, from the thick scab over Bull’s eye, to the shallow gouges in his arm…

No wound in his side. No gaping hole, no smell of sickness. Dorian’s breath catches in his chest. “You’re—all right,” he rasps.

“Yeah. Takes more than a fear demon to hurt me. Especially when my kadan’s life is on the line.” He manages a smile, raises Dorian’s hand and kisses it.

Interesting. It seems he becomes something of a romantic after near-death experiences. Dorian wonders if he can use that to his advantage in the future and quickly decides against it. He struggles to prop himself up on an elbow. “Can I—can you help me—“

“Whoa, hey, remember what I said about taking it slow?” Bull slips a powerful arm around him. “Relax, let me do the work.”

Bull cradles Dorian’s body and sits him up, pulling him in until Dorian is leaning against Bull’s chest, head resting on his shoulder. “How’s that?” he rumbles.

Dorian kisses Bull’s collarbone. “I’m very glad you’re all right.”

“I told you, it takes more than a fear demon to hurt me. All I got were a few cuts and bruises.” He rubs Dorian’s naked back with one large palm. “You don’t have to worry, I’m fine.”

“In the dream…” Dorian trails off. He can hardly bear to think of it. “You were there. You were. Possessed.”

The rubbing of his back stutters to a stop. “Possessed? Did I—hurt you?”

Dorian hesitates, then nods.

Bull’s hands retreat from him. “Are you sure you want me to—“

“No, Bull, please stay.” He circles an arm around Bull’s middle, squeezes him weakly.

Bull’s arms wrap around him and hold him close. “I’ll never hurt you, kadan.”

“I know,” Dorian murmurs.

“Never.”

“I know.”

Dorian shuts his eyes. Bull’s chest rises and falls against him with slow, deep breaths. There. He’s going to be all right. It wasn’t real after all.

——

A quiet, animal grunt.

Dorian finds he’s on his back. The little orb of light bobs above him. The air is humid and close on his broken skin.

Shuffle of movement from his left. Pain. There is pain. Dorian’s eyes swivel down. Bull is there, mouth smeared in red. His hands are pressed to his face. It’s fine. Dorian watches the bobbing light. It isn’t real. He’s only dreaming again.

He shuts his eyes and waits to wake up.


End file.
